Magnesium Oxide Wallboard

[ganderegg1]

Does anybody here have experience with magnesium oxide wallboard? I hear that it is better than drywall.

[GreginAlaska]

I own a bunch of it but I've only put it on two small, intersecting walls so far. It certainly is tougher than regular sheetrock and the fact that you don't need to tape or mud it is a big plus too....but the stuff is not cheap...especially when you have to ship it to Alaska. heh

[mkrepel]

It is definitely interesting stuff. I recently had to deal with some flood damage and replace a bunch of drywall, carpet etc. I am interested in this stuff with steel studs so that I don't have to replace it next time the rivers decide to jump their banks. Just dry it out and repaint if required

Mike

[GreginAlaska]

Flood damage! That sucks. I'm using steel studs in the house, they sure are nice and straight and easy to deal with. Here's a pic, the place is a mess...but you can see a couple piles of my MgO board too. heh

[mkrepel]

Hey Greg,

Are you doing the stud/wallboard work yourself? How hard was it to follow the curves? I imagine steel studs are easier to form to them than wood. What I can see in the pic looks really good.

Mike

[GreginAlaska]

I am doing the stud work with help from a couple of $10 an hour helpers. It was not as hard as I thought it would be, one tool I'm really glad I bought is an electric metal shear by DeWalt. Cut the flanges every so often and it easily bends to the roof shape. I guess you could make the cuts with a cut off saw too, but that shear is pretty darned handy.

http://www.dewalt.com/tools/metalworkin ... dw891.aspx

I am having a professional put up the wall board.

[GreginAlaska]

I tell you another thing I am glad I did, I bought my steel framing from the Scafco distributor in Anchorage. Scafco has a pre-built header and a jamb they call Kwik-jamb.

http://www.scafco.com/stud/HeaderProducts.html

It certainly made it easier for us amateurs, a proffessionl might say I was wasting my money, but it was worth every penny to me. (and they weren't all that expensive anyways)

[mkrepel]

Yeah, It definitely helps to have the right tools.

I bet the pros also use the pre-fab headers that you are using. Time is money for those guys. I am sure any that are worth their salt could do the job without it and, depending on their supplier, probably do, but they don't want to spend any more time than they have to. Also, most of them are employing the $10/hr hands too. They don't want to be in a position where they have to do all the hard stuff!

I usually opt for having the pros hang the wall board too. It is hard to get it just right. Besides, I have enough shoulder/back/neck problems without doing that kind of work!

Anyway, it looks like you are doing an excellent job.

Mike

[Mountain View]

We used all steel studs in our domes too. The hard part was that we where required to float the walls so we left about 3" at the top of each wall. Floating was required because of the expansive clay in this area. Yes there is movement so we have to do some touch up from time to time.
The steel studs where great to work with!!